Odi et Amo
by Dicta Licence
Summary: By whom, and by what means was this designed the whispered incantation which allows free passage into the phantoms of the mind? Set after the novel Hannibal. The end is only the beginning . . .
1. One

Odi et Amo 

A collaboration between Dicta Licence and Mischa Lecter.

Disclaimer: All the usual copyrights apply. All reviews and constructive criticism welcome. Flamers will be sent to languish in the depths of oubliettes.

Author's Notes: This story will be told in a series of scenes in reverse-forward loops with no specific dates and that might make the timeline somewhat confusing. Apologies for the inconvenience.__

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_By whom, and by what means, was this designed?_

_The whispered incantation which allows_

_Free passage to the phantoms of the mind?_

**_- T. S. Elliot -_**

Buenos Aires 

A strange landscape of cream and shadow. The slender ridges of a woman's ribcage just below the curve of her naked breast. The dim outline of a man's scarred left hand. Fingers feeling along the length of every nub and shallow groove of each individual rib. Thumb smoothing over the invisible path the other fingers have taken. The gentle rise and fall of her chest as he listens to the sound of her sleeping breath.

In the apartment there is light only from the headlights of a faraway car passing through this, Buenos Aires' Recoleta district. It plays on the whitewashed walls in front of the wide-open French doors that lead to the terrace outside their bedroom casting strange spectres of darkness and illumination onto the drowsing woman and her lover who lay awake, observing her.

Serenaded by the constant ticking of the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece, he hovers over her either as a malevolent demon lover or her demonic guardian angel, keeping watch over her as she sleeps. A pale, elegantly formed hand reaches up to brush aside the strands of her hair that obstruct his view of her unique combination of features.  

His lover's skin possessed a fragile, translucent quality that never failed to entrance and fascinate him time and time again. He liked to think he could see the fierce pulsing of the tiny blue veins within the pale globe of her breast as he gently took the coral tip into his mouth and softly suckled on it. 

The subtle acceleration of her pulse as she wakes with a sigh, blinking sleepy blue eyes at bloody maroon, once more giving in to the silky tendrils of renewed desire coursing through her veins like white flame.

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Early morning. He is in the kitchen, cooking for her. Sunbeams stream through from the high bay windows of the room, bearing down on the doctor, illuminating his profile with a light golden glow. Around his outline tiny particles of dust are caught within the beam's path, currents of slow, warm air causing them to move in a haphazard swirling pattern, colliding with each other like space dust. The coffee-pot on the stove has not yet begun to boil.

In the oven are fresh croissants, warming. The sleeves of Dr. Hannibal Lecter's white linen shirt are rolled up in preparation for the task of washing a bowl of fresh strawberries in the metal sink. Cool water runs over his hands that hold the plump fruits underneath a steady stream of clear liquid. After washing, he places them in a porcelain dish, which he leaves in the refrigerator to chill.

A medium sized mixing bowl on the marble counter contain five eggs, yolks swimming in the lighter, translucent albumin, their cracked half-shells neatly stacked together beside the smooth crystal of the bowl. He takes a large balloon whisk from the hanging rack overhead and whips the eggs until they are of a light, frothy consistency before beginning to work on the vegetables for the omelette. 

Dr. Lecter peels a large onion by stripping away the first of its many layers including the paper thin skin, chopping it into tiny pieces and adding them to the eggs. 

Stillness. A change in atmosphere. To this day he can never quite explain what it is that makes known to him her presence. 

"Clarice." 

He turns to behold her and as always, the breath is stolen from his throat. 

Clarice. 

A thousand and one memories attached to the soft syllables of that one word, beginning in the release of air from deep within his throat, a hard strike against the roof of his mouth, tongue drawing back anteriorly along the palate before exhaling, allowing his lips to caress a consonant and a vowel before ending in the sibilant hiss the last letters of her name makes. It echoes in the slanting of white golden sunlight onto the twisted plains of dark satin sheets, in the low, agonised gasp of a lover caught within the throes of either ecstasy or agony deep into the night when it is impossible to tell one from the other.

She wears nothing but his dress shirt from the Opera last night. It hangs loosely on her slender frame, slightly rumpled, gracing her with an elegantly dishevelled look that he finds impossible not to take notice of. 

Dr. Lecter directs his attention to one of the red bell peppers as she slowly saunters her way towards him, the long expanse of her shapely legs barely hidden underneath the tail of the shirt. He knows she wears nothing else. The knife is sharp and he has no difficulty splitting the bright red vegetable into four pieces before separating the spicy seeds from the milder pulp and skin.

Making her way behind him, her right hand holding onto his, her index finger brushing against his where it rests against the blunt end of the knife. Starling reaches forward to place another bell pepper onto the wooden chopping board before left hand does the same to his other hand, fingers entwined. She rests her chin against his right shoulder affording a clear view of their hands.

Together, they slice through the vegetable, before Clarice Starling removes her hands from his and move them up his arms, to rest on his shoulders. Kneading them, she blows lightly on his neck, trailing mouth up to the lobe of his ear. Red lips nipping, flicking, kissing, leaving an equally red track on his pale skin as blood pools to the surface long enough to tint but not to mark. The sound of tapping on the board each slice he makes punctuated by a kiss from her. 

Chop. 

Kiss. 

Chop. 

Kiss. 

Chop. 

Kiss. 

Kiss. 

Kiss. . .

Hiss.

A sharp intake of breath, blood pouring out of a deep cut on his index finger, mixing with the juice of _Capsicum annum grossum. Starling cradling his hand like a small animal before bringing into her mouth the precise spot where he had cut himself cooking for her. Then comes the tender pressure of suction on the wound, her eyes locking into his even as she takes within her a little of his life. _

Blue into maroon. Perhaps a subtle narrowing of his, mouth parting slightly. 

From the dry produce drawer near the sink, a bush red pepper. _Capsicum frutescens. _Chilli pepper on the chopping board, he looks at her oddly, not comprehending, and there are few things in this world Hannibal Lecter does not comprehend immediately. She places a kiss onto his jawline taking the knife from where it lay and slicing off the top and stem, exposing the fiery fruit's whitish seeds. So pale yet they contain all of the flame. 

Starling strokes the open portion of the capsicum onto Dr. Lecter's mouth. Almost immediately, the heat cleaves to him, tiny bonfires in his veins flaring out from his lips into his brain, inflaming the senses. Pointed pink tongue darting out in a futile attempt to cool only to be burned by the icy-hot blaze. As a painter would, Starling brushed her own lips with the pepper before touching her hand to the back of his already warm neck and pulling his face down to hers for a brutal kiss. An ultimate mix of pleasure and pain sealed by a passion that transcends time and tide.

Still bleeding, he crushes her to him, his blood staining the pristine white shirt like the crimson petals of a burning rose. __

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**_Three Years Earlier_******

_Their relationship has a great deal to do with the penetration of Clarice Starling, which she avidly welcomes and encourages…_

Hannibal Lecter did not make love to her. He explored her. He devoured her in a way most people would not have believed him capable. And she gloried in it. The feel of him, the scent of him, the taste of him. In her, on her, surrounding her, marking her. Most days, Clarice Starling wonders how she could ever have survived without knowing his touch. The rest of the time she wonders if she has gone mad to want this, the caress of a madman.

_It has much to do with the  envelopment of Hannibal Lecter, far beyond the bounds of his experience…_

He is as a child with a new toy. And as all children are known to do, he explores it as frequently as he is allowed to, with the same amount of curiosity and indefatigable verve as a five year-old in a sweet shop. Having overcome his initial unfamiliarity with the territory, his innate capacity towards relentless perfectionism drove him to excel in this new art he found more remarkable and sensual than he had ever dreamed of as each day passed.

They lie together now, exhausted. He feels the cool sheets on his belly in contrast to his lover's warm form that cups him from behind. His left cheek is against the pillow and for some reason, the texture of the fabric is more pronounced after they complete a round of vigorous nocturnal activity. 

"You're very beautiful, Clarice. I shall never tire of telling you that. Do you understand?" he murmurs into the plump, down-filled pillow beneath his head.

"Yes. Do you mean what you say?" 

"I always do. Would you doubt me?"

"No. Never."

She pressed her lips into his back, pinching the tight knot of muscle between his shoulder and neck. Beneath her ear, the soft rumble of his breathing mixes with the rising growl from his chest.

_It is possible that Clarice Starling could frighten him. Sex is a splendid structure they add to every day…_

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In the silent twilight, under the glow of a pale moon, Clarice Starling sleeps deeply, sweetly, in the silence of the lambs_._

_But does she truly?_

Within the midst of this near paradisiacal existence there remains a darker side to their story. . .

He sweeps aside the covers and slips out the bed, leaving the bedchamber soundlessly only to return in equal silence moments later, an ampoule of some unknown medication and a small syringe in his hand. The doctor breaks off the tip, and draws the liquid into the tube. He injects the serum into her hip. He sees it scrape, and then pierce the skin. She does not stir.

If one is ever presented the opportunity to peer closely, they can see the myriad of tiny pinpricks that dot a square inch of her body where the needle punctures it on a regular basis.

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TBC 1/? --


	2. Two

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Do I dare  
Disturb the universe?  
In a minute there is time  
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

**- T. S. Eliot -**

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Buenos Aires 

Does the night have a pulse? Is the darkness alive?

It feels like that when I lie here. What is this time of the day we call night, anyway? Is it absence or presence? Should it be said: it is the time when light has gone away. Or would it be more correct to refer to it by saying the darkness has arrived? I don't know. But it interests me. Nowadays more than before.

The darkness is so complete now. It's everywhere, and I mean everywhere. I know I could make it vanish by turning the lamp on the nightstand on, but what would that serve? It would be temporary and vain. The moment I'm in is the moment of darkness and there aren't enough lights in the world to change that. 

Light or no light it still is night. 

Some things are like that, unchangeable. It's funny how turning on a light makes the darkness seem threatening. Albeit you can hear people everywhere chanting that worn-out phrase claiming that you can make a difference, there are things that are unchangeable. 

Sometimes you can make a difference. Sometimes… You can't. 

Although I can't see him I know he's there. Maybe the colourless blackness is deeper in the space his body fills or maybe he radiates it. I know he's there, right by my side. It sounds so romantic… Right by my side. But when I say – think – so, I don't mean it like that. I just know that he is there. Maybe I wish that it would be indifferent for me but it isn't, and it never will be. I have no power over that.

There he lies and he's not indifferent. He is he and that alone makes the thought of his insignificance impossible; he matters just because he is he. And I am I. Are we we? Is there a we for us? Is there even an us? 

I get up very quietly. Even if he was awake I'm not all that sure if he could hear me. I go to the cupboard, open it, and reach for the top shelf. There, behind a shoebox, it is. I wrap my fingers around the cold metal and pull it towards me. Silently I walk back to the bed. He is on his back and I sit astride on his chest. He is awake in a quarter of a second but does not move. I see his eyes in the darkness; whether the glow from within their fiery depths are real or just in my head I don't bother to analyse. I press the gun against the soft flesh under his jaw. He doesn't even so much as flinch.

I feel his hand moving up my thigh. 

I am as naked as he is. 

His touch moves higher and then stops at the curve of my waist. 

I tighten my grip on the gun and press it harder against him. His hand simply rests on my waist, thumb brushing against my stomach.

We stay like that for a while. An odd sculpture. Then, slowly, I lean in to kiss him. As I devour him with my lips I pull the trigger.

The click the trigger makes into an empty barrel produces an unbelievably loud sound… In the darkness.

He takes a firm hold of me and pushes me on my back. I'm trapped between the bed and his body. We continue kissing, building up the heat once again. His fingers at my breast, in me, fucking me deliriously. 

After a while, just before he enters me, he looks at me in the darkness and asks a question.

I don't answer. We both know that I wasn't sure. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A woman, almost fragile in her near ethereal beauty stands on the porch. The morning air has a biting chill to it that soaks into one's bones, but she does not seem to mind. Her mind is on other, more important things than the weather.

He comes up behind her and wraps a pair of lean yet powerful arms around her. She smiles very faintly; just enough to assure him his touch is not unwanted. It is still strange to see them like that, so close. So used as we are to the invisible barrier around both of them it is slightly puzzling to view this new level of interaction between them. It fights against something basic and familiar, something we take for granted. Their relationship, their desire for one another is something that should not exist and perhaps it's the very thing that keeps us attracted.

His arms at her waist, keeping her very close, he says something very softly we have to strain to hear it. His manner is silent yet far from weak.

"What are you thinking of?"

"Happiness."

"Do you have it?"

"I don't even know what it is."

"Hmmm."

They both stay quiet for a while. He enjoys this, having her heart so close to his. Her body is so warm, almost like she had a fire burning inside her. He absorbs her heat into himself, slipping a needle fine as a hair into the vein of her arm before replacing his arm at her waist. When she speaks again neither of them knows exactly how long they have been standing there. There is no change in her demeanour. Or if there is, it is unnoticeable to anyone but Dr. Lecter.

"I'm not unhappy." She wets her lips.

"And not happy." Always stating, never questioning. 

"I can't be. Not yet."

"I know."

He leans closer to her; his red mouth almost touches her ear. His words ride on the currents of exhaled air.

"Would it make this easier for you to have someone to blame?"

She takes a long time before she decides to answer. When she does, her voice is perhaps slightly distorted. Because of what, is impossible to say.

"Probably not."

"Probably not, Clarice…" He turns her around to face him. His eyes capture her wholly. She does not turn away, meeting him on even terms.

Dr. Lecter leans to her, his mouth again next to her ear. He hisses the words.

"Tell me honestly, Clarice…"

He pauses, as if to think what to say next.

"Doesn't it tempt you to hate me?" 

She closes her eyes. Dr. Lecter knows this because he can feel her eyelashes sweep on his face. She is thinking, or at least trying to. There are some things better left unsaid and she settles for the first intelligible thought that comes out of the jumble of her mind. 

"Don't ask me questions for which I don't have the answers."

"You never even tried to answer this one," he takes a step backwards and puts his hands on both side of her face. "Tell me this, Clarice: do you hate me?"

This time her reply comes immediately and her voice is clear. "Just as much as you hate me."

He smiles wryly. "I suppose that's fair enough."

He pulls her face to him and kisses her forehead. Then he releases her, turns around and walks away.

After he is gone Starling continues what she was doing before he came, just stands on the porch. Her forehead burns where his lips touched and she cannot decide whether she likes it or not.

In the end, it doesn't matter.

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Under the purple half-light of yet another moon, another lunar cycle to mark the time she has spent with a man from whom society at large would have shrunk from in horror. Instead, she lays her face within the comforting confines of his arm, her lips against his ante-cubital. That thin portion of skin that links the powerful biceps to the flexors of his lower arm. Her mouth rests there, tongue tasting, tickling the pulse of an unseen vein. The vein where they would have injected a lethal cocktail of drugs had he been caught, brought to trial, and inevitably, sentenced to death.

How much she is aware of herself these days, we do not know, or how much control of her faculties she has, for theirs is a game of seduction and secrets that neither one can ever hope to win without first giving in to the other. 

Just minutes later, she is awake. Moving out of bed, she picks up the shirt she had literally torn off his back earlier. The top three buttons are useless, are nowhere to be found and so she contents herself with leaving it half-closed, for in the dead of the night what prying eye could see the pale expanse of her creamy skin other than him? 

A silent ghost, she glides through the hallways of the empty mansion, her bare feet noiseless against the cold stone floors. A left turn and then another left, past a marble bridge that overlooked the abandoned ballroom where they had danced that evening, down another dark corridor, odd shapes and shadows on the walls cast by the moonlight filtering past the great mullioned windows acting as a sieve. A final right turn to face a heavy oak door. A clockwise turn of the big brass key in an old-fashioned lock and she is in the study.

The large cabinet on the far off wall where he keeps bottles of assorted liquor for some unknown reason. Tonight's choice is Tequila. Sit in the big leather chair, the one he stays in during the day, the one she occupies during the nights. 

Twist open the cap, the familiar crackling of the seal being broken, aluminium cap scraping against the grooves of glass. Toss that there stopper aside. Then the pungent aroma of some good ol' Cuervo just before the bitch hits your tongue, glides down your throat in a blaze of fucking glory and screws with your guts. One tequila. Two tequila. Three tequila. Floor. 

It is how one of the servants finds her in the morning, when the diminutive little maid opens the door to the doctor's study to clean it.

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"I cannot imagine how someone such as you would find all of this so…new." She ran her fingers through her tousled red hair, feeling languorous and insouciant. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, the sheets covering the lower half of his body.

"It isn't that much difficult, really. I had countless opportunities but never the drive nor desire to actually pursue the act other than for purely educational purposes. "

"And did Ms. DuBerry attempt to…educate you?" she said archly. An inevitable question

"She offered, yes." 

The all too typical follow-up. "And did you accept?" 

"I shall never tell."

Her jealousy is palpable and exquisite to him. He is so distracted in savouring it that he failed to notice she had drawn her arm back for a powerful right hook.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

A roster of various hurts and scratches. Beneath the silk of scarves and gowns lie the impressions of his teeth. Purplish-brown bruises placed there in an act of love, yes, but to the untrained eye they might seem cruel and animalistic. There is a cluster of them on the soft white flesh under her arm, coincidentally or considerately placed where it might be hidden carefully by the stole of an evening gown. On him, the marks are more blatant, more obvious to the public. The servants keep their thoughts to themselves, but it is hard to ignore the bruise on the bone under the doctor's right eye, or that scratch on his forearm.

The relationship these days between Dr. Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling cannot be quantified by any known means. The battles they fight against each other are emotional, are physical. He taunts her at times simply because he wishes to see her cry and drink of her tears and more often than not, she retaliates by physical means.

To make love is to make hate. One cannot exist without the other, and to these two foes, the act of love is a battle in itself. Each one fights not to give in, knowing that it is impossible when one cannot resist the other, when one cannot exist without the other. If either the doctor or Clarice Starling is frightened by the growing exigency that they have for one another, they do not show it.

"You hate me, don't you, Clarice?"

"I want to."

"Why don't you?"

"I did not know what hate felt like. Not the hate that comes after love. It's huge and desperate, and it longs to be proved wrong.  And every day it's proved right, it grows a little more monstrous, " she said.

"That's a very eloquent way of putting it, don't you think?"

"I don't know whether I want to kiss you or kill you or hurt you or. . . I don't know. Now and then I think I just might go insane. How can I be your lover? I must be mad."

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They are in the garden, on a stone bench. In the depths of her mind, Starling imagines she can feel the grey gargoyles on the fountain stare at her with their granite eyes. She feels the cold spray of the waters hitting her face, on the beauty mark high on her cheek.

"I can't change the way the world goes round," she says abruptly. 

"Would you?"

"I can't."

"If you could, would you?"

"You know the answer to that."

"No, I don't. Tell me." he moves aside a lock of her hair, brushing his thumb against the embedded specks of dark gunpowder.

"No."

"Why?"

"Because I can't change it."

"Clarice –" he looks into her eyes.

"I can't change it. I don't know why but I can't change it. I can't change it."

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End file.
